Tag Archives: conversions

Wolfram Alpha is an eccentric genius trapped in a small box known as the internet a completely non-human computational engine. It can do your calculus homework–I mean, it can help you learn math, statistics, physics, culture, geography, music and even…help you cook?

Wolfram Alpha, in addition to apps for music theory, calculus, chemistry and a bunch of other things I didn’t really study in school (coughfilmmajorcough), also has an app to help the culinarily minded and curious amongst us: Culinary Mathematics (sorry Droids, iOS only at the moment).

Why this is cool:

You can calculate the nutritional information of individual foods or entire meals on the go.

You can access dietary recommendations for individual vitamins and minerals.

Perform cooking calculations while you’re busy in the kitchen. For instance, a recipe calls for a certain volume of flour. How much is that by weight? Or the recipe is using metric ingredients and you’re a crazy imperial-system-using American. You could convert those yourself by why, when you can have a super fancy calculator do it for you?

Research food economics—how much does food cost in your area versus another? How much chocolate is consumed in say, my town versus yours? Fun food trivia for the whole family.

Calculate the cost of food per unit, portion or even usableyield. This makes party planning so much easier. Trying to figure out how much food you need to buy to feed 40 people at a family holiday brunch, a graduation celebration or a semi-formal grilled cheese dinner party? Now you can figure out how much you’ll need to buy per person, including the trimmed or unusable portions of food, and how much it’ll cost you. Yay for planning!